Where to get images for your WordPress blog posts

Many of us need and want to know where to find and how to add great images to our WordPress blog posts and pages.

Pictures can take a add polish to good blog, making it a great blog; using quality images is important. Simply using images from a Google image search is not a good idea (unless you want to ensure the copyright situation for the images you find and want to use), nor is copy/pasting scrappy-looking clipart from Word, etc.

There are a many ways to include images legally and we make frequent use of the following:

Fotolia for when you want a polished, specifically created image – yes, it costs a from £1.20 for each image, but you choose exactly what you want and know you are legally allowed to use the image. The downside of Fotolia is that many images look staged and obviously “stock” images (not created specifically for you).

Photopin offers images shared freely through Flickr by the photographers. You need to include the credit details for the photographer – this information and link is provided for you to copy/paste to your post or page. You can read how to use Photopin for your WordPress blog here.

And Stock.xchng is still worth a browse for good no-charge, royalty-free photographs.

Just don’t, whatever you do, use images you find in the Google image search – that is not a good idea unless you want to track down and request permission.

There a few plugins that will help you find images too – have a browse if you like (search within Plugins, Add New) but be aware of any links that may need to be included or that your website doesn’t slow down as a result.

This should cover most of your needs, however we’ll take a look at options to create images and how to resize them. And if you use a good image source, please share…

One other thing – be careful not to spend too much time trying to find the perfect image – before you know it, half an hour has passed in enjoying wonderful images!

This is excellent. I'm not the only one that wants/needs to blog frequently, for various reasons, but just don't find/make the time. Yoast's Caroline gives us some sensible pointers. ... See MoreSee Less